


Effects of Voice-Possession in the Longer Term

by mitzirocker



Series: Metaphysiology [3]
Category: Twitch Plays Pokemon (Let's Play)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-25
Updated: 2015-08-25
Packaged: 2019-09-28 19:08:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17188682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mitzirocker/pseuds/mitzirocker
Summary: 'You didn't think you could go through all that and stay human, did you?'





	Effects of Voice-Possession in the Longer Term

The way the mob operated was possess kid -> drive kid into insanity through sensory overload -> absorb kid into the hive -> kill body -> move on. Identities are so fluid in the mob that it was easy to forget you ever had a name of your own and that there was ever more to you than one more anonymous voice.

Talking in past tense here because Helix. ‘You rescued me from the silence. I’ll save you from the noise.’ The first shot it really got after it was resurrected was at the league. After the Hall of Fame the Voices had no clear goal for the first time in a while. Should they fight Mewtwo? Try to catch ‘em all? Go to Sevii? Johto? Like 90% of the mob’s power is in its will, and without something to focus that on… Church of Helix dogma and Oak’s report to the Silence both say it was Helix that burned the Voices out of Red, but really it was both of them, so in concert there was no difference between the two.

Redhelix chased the Voices away from Red, but it also screwed around with their metaphysical makeup in ways that are hard to describe in English. When it desynced, the Voices could no longer absorb minds and souls. They could still corrupt, still change, but there would always be a barrier between their new hosts (new voices) and the mob proper. AJ never had to worry about keeping himself distinct from the mob; even at his darkest he always knew  _I am AJ I grew up in new bark town with my Mamas the only other kid in town died when I was nine when all this is over I’ll get to go home_. Sometimes they overload their hosts (’Another death. Such a shame, they’re all children.’) and sometimes they don’t (’This cannot end well.’ ‘Stop being such a party pooper Brendumbass!’), but the children always get to grow up and move on, always get to be individuals.

Sort of.

Redhelix got the ‘surrender yourself to the mind hive’ bit  _hard_ , but not so much the ‘change you into one of the Voices’ bit. Post-mob hosts are essentially isolated Voices with their own bodies. They have a collective subconscious, enough to share dreams and finish each other’s sentences. Get more than three of them in the same room and they’ll start bouncing off each other’s sentences, voices getting louder and more rhythmic, falling into familiar patterns. (Alice and Napoleon were shouting at each other, clipped fast syllables endlessly stacking. Camila danced around them, limbs swinging randomly. Aoooo sang, loud and off-key, a melody that none of them had heard before and all of them knew. AJ commented on everything he saw in a non-stop monotone. And Jimmy didn’t notice that anything was wrong until he saw the look on Cheren’s face.) They answer to each other’s names, recognise people the others have met. There’s enough echoing in their minds to give any psychic a headache. They’re immune to timeline fluctuations, which sounds great until you’re seeing your best friend talking to a boy he calls by  _your name_  and all you can think is that he’s finally replaced you, abandoned you, like everyone always does, and you’re not exactly mentally stable to begin with and you can’t find any of your pokemon and you’re enough of a Voice to be utterly terrified of being alone and the next thing you know your nails are buried in not-you’s throat.

(Lysandre knew all this. Lysandre told D this. ‘You’re a monster. You can’t be saved, but you can atone. All you need to do is destroy them.’)

(D said, ‘If I am a monster, then what can I do but act like one?’ They slammed the blue button.)


End file.
